27 October 2008

Initially, the GT200 based GeForce GTX280 and GTX260 were priced so high, the price/performance ratio was so bad that it didn't make any sense to pay the huge premium over the little performance gain. Of course we are comparing it against Radeon HD4800 series. To boost sales, Nvidia cut GeForce GTX280 price by 62%; GTX260 by 33%, placing the latter in the same price point with Radeon HD4870.

Just-another-card from AMD to cover the price point vacuum between Radeon HD 4670 & HD 4850, as well as to battle with Nvidia's Geforce 9800 GT. This card is based on the RV770LE core, which has 1 cluster of shader processors (usually defective) disabled, bringing the magic number to 640. Where the fully functional RV770 (HD4850/4870) have all the 800.

An interesting to note, AMD confirmed that disabling the cluster is a hardware-cut, so chances are it is impossible for anyone to "revive" the card with a modded BIOS. Let aside the controversy surrounding its "missing shaders", let's take a look at this extracted review:

01 October 2008

"A Nikon camera purchased from eBay for just 17 pounds contained sensitive data about terrorist suspects according to a report from Reuters. The camera, which was handed into a Hertfordshire police station, was apparently lost by a British MI6 agent and contained pictures of rocket launchers and missiles as well as the names, fingerprints and academic records of several members of the terrorist organisation.

It's not clear whether the data was on a removable memory card, or the camera's internal storage, but if it was the latter we think this might be a first."

What we have here today is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Black Edition. The Black features an unlocked multiplier, which is an exclusive feature traditionally found only in top-of-the-range microprocessors, such as AMD's Athlon FX & Intel's Extreme Edition.

These cpus offer enormous overclocking potential as well as excellent price/performance ratio, specifically targeting at the "DIY Enthusiast" market.